Three
years ago a film came out of Hollywood that was conceptually great even
if the execution was fatally flawed. Called Idiocracy, this
comedy follows the mishaps of a character named Joe Bowers who is not
the sharpest tool in the shed, but who, through a government hibernation
experiment gone wrong, awakens to a society in the year 2505 that has
become so stupid because of mass commercialism that Joe shines as a
genius in comparison. After a predictable series of mishaps, the point
is clear: We are on the wrong track in pushing dumbed-down, ‘me
too’ concepts and products. Society will only worsen, not improve.

Organic
vs. Artificial

It is a lesson that modern-day fighters for individual liberty learned
decades ago. In ensuring and protecting freedom for the individual,
we create a better society. On a pragmatic level, individual liberty
is a concept that sees the health and happiness of the parts as leading
to the health of the whole – not the reverse. Put another way,
individual liberty is organic – when
not blocked artificially, it flows naturally and creates healthy relationships
in an ever-expanding web of mutually-beneficial interactions among people.

On the other hand, much of today’s political and economic structure
is not organic but artificial. It comes from the Top down, not the bottom
up. It does not flow naturally, easily, and quickly but with artificial
constraints that are marked by dissension, delays, and waste. It is,
by nature, coercive. ‘You do what we say because you have to and
at the ultimate point of a gun. You do not do it voluntarily.’

With this in mind, we can see that the larger structures being created
or expanded in the 21st Century are not geared to preserving or even
considering individual freedom. Rather, they are all about mass uniformity
and commercialism in their worst forms. Whether it is the European Union
or the still-in-utero North American Union, their object is the same:
stifling individualism in favour of a collectivistic uniformity. Yes,
of course, lip service will be paid to the individual with such hollow
slogans as ‘Land of the Free, Home of the Brave’; but it
is still the Whole consuming the Parts. It is still artificial, stiff,
and unnatural.

Codex
Alimentarius

For those readers not familiar with the Codex Alimentarius Commission,
it is just one more of these mass-uniformity structures. Originally
created in 1962 by the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture
Organization with the noblest of stated intentions – that is,
to protect consumer food health and eliminate barriers to international
food trade – the Codex Alimentarius Commission has been engaged
in developing food standards and guidelines that will be imposed from
the Top down. Captured by interests antithetical to health freedom,
Codex is now well on the path to promulgating food rules that will lead
to ‘dumbed-down’ health – a kind of health Idiocracy
– for individuals throughout the World.

That is precisely why the National
Health Federation (NHF), an international nonprofit consumer health-freedom
organization, has been sending me to these Codex committee meetings
every year for ten years in a row now. Having obtained official Codex
observer status, the NHF is able to attend and speak out at these meetings.
It is also able to submit, and has submitted, written arguments in favor
of health-freedom positions at many of these meetings. As the only health-freedom
organization accredited by Codex, NHF has almost always been the lone
voice striving to eliminate oppressive standards and guidelines while
enhancing consumer freedom of choice. The other delegates and organizations
at these meetings are basically FDA-style bureaucrats and trade organizations
with their own special commercial interests and agendas.

In particular, NHF has opposed the Codex Vitamin and Mineral Food Supplement
Guidelines that were adopted in framework form in 2004-2005, and that
will limit access to healthy dietary supplements as well as ‘dumb
down’ their potencies to non-beneficial levels. These maximum
upper permitted limits have not yet been set. However, if the Germans,
Danes and others have their way, then ridiculously-low limits will be
imposed that will ensure that supplements pose no competition with their
pharmaceutical industry. For example, the German Institute (BfR) that
has conducted ‘research’ into this area has determined that
niacin is dangerous to consumers at levels higher than 17 milligrams
per capsule! This is the madness that they would impose upon the rest
of us as they die from their drug-and-sausage-induced heart attacks.
That is a party we have no intention of joining!

In another area, ironically enough, the EU and NHF have worked together
at the Codex Committee on Food Labelling meetings to see that genetically-modified
foods are labeled as such for the consumer. In this case, the North
Americans, joined by the Argentineans, Australians, and New Zealanders,
are the bad actors, contending, as the American delegate has said, that
“the consumer is too ignorant to understand GM-labelled foods.”
So far, this battle has been a draw but NHF has been aggressively vocal
at each of these meetings arguing for the right of the consumer to know
what he or she is eating.

Codex guidelines and standards cover many more subjects than those just
mentioned. Ranging from oils and food additives to pesticides and natural
mineral waters, Codex is involved. And while these standards are ostensibly
to be applied to international trade, the Codex Strategic Plan specifically
states – and almost all countries agree – that they will
be applied domestically as well. It is just a matter of time, they say.

Bigger
Is Not Always Better

In the European Union, which began innocently enough as nothing more
than a Customs Union, decisions – important decisions –
are increasingly made by the European Commission in Brussels. Each year,
fewer and fewer decisions are being made in Dublin or London or Paris
or Madrid. The natural tendency of governments and their institutions
to grow over time is asserting itself, inexorably, like the laws of
gravity and space. Power is being sucked in to the Center. It is being
increasingly centralized.

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And
therein lies the major problem, for the more that you distance the power
wielders from those over whom they exercise that power, the more corrupt
and arrogant they will become and behave. It is ultimately about accountability,
and you cannot have true accountability when the rulers are not immediately
and directly accountable to the citizens.

The problem with the latest attempt to accumulate even more power in
the hands of the EU Superstate, through the Lisbon Treaty, is that the
rulers and the ruled will become even more distant from one another
than they already are! Centralization of power is the bane of freedom.
As rulers become less accountable to their subjects – or citizens
– they will become more corrupt and more likely to do harm.

But
as unlikely as it may seem now, there is another, more important reason
to shun centralization: Increased concentration of power attracts sociopaths
to it like flames attract moths. Such power in one place is irresistible
to those who crave it. This is hard for the average decent person to
comprehend, but sociopaths do exist and they do gravitate towards power.
A more powerful Brussels will be an even stronger magnet for the future
power-mongers of the World. Do we really need to invite another Hitler
or Stalin to rain ruin down upon us?

The
Banality of Centralization

While some might scoff at a future EU dictator in the same way that
the Germans scoffed at a Nazi Germany in the 1920s, even the scoffers
must accept the very real risk – I would say certainty –
that a more powerful and centralized European Union will result in the
banality of life – its ‘dumbing down’ as political,
economic, and social life is forced into an artificial, bureaucratically-crafted
mold of European uniformity.

This is already taking place. The heavy hand of distant bureaucrats
is felt throughout the EU’s member states over the littlest of
details – from weights and measures to employee relations to vitamin
and mineral food supplements. Think of any aspect of your life in the
European Union and the EU Superstate is involved at some level. Again,
distant bureaucrats making important decisions about your life.

Codex
and the EU

This, too, is where the worlds of the EU and Codex intersect. Unknown
to the average citizen, the Codex Commission and Committees are trundling
along, each year, making rule after rule that its member countries,
the EU included, are expected to adopt – both in international
trade and domestic trade. There are treaties and agreements that exist
right now that commit the member states to adopting these Codex ‘guidelines.’
These include, but are not limited to, the Technical Barriers to Trade
and the Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreements, and the EU is a signatory
to both of these.

At
Codex meetings, the EU representative has been pushing his narrow view
that consumers must be protected from vitamin and mineral food supplements.
They are too strong in potency and there are too many ‘unproven’
ones, he claims, so they must be ‘dumbed down’ to a level
that will be of no benefit to anyone except to the pharmaceutical companies
whose profits are protected by the elimination of competition. The EU
representative at the Codex Committee dealing with this issue has immense
influence; and I have even seen him giving instructions to the Committee
Chairman right in front of the other delegates during the meeting. That
is how bold it has become!

So
the EU Superstate – claiming all the while that it of course has
the best interests of the consumers in mind – is pushing reduced
potency and variety of supplements within the EU and internationally
through Codex. Within the EU, Ireland, Britain, Sweden, and the Netherlands
(being the most liberal countries, permitting the sale of a wider variety
and higher potency of supplements) will be the first to fall (at the
end of this year through EU Food Supplements Directive
– not because of Codex as some misinformed
persons will tell you), to be followed later at some as-yet-to-be-determined
date by global Codex rules. The United States and Canada, represented
as they are by food bureaucrats of their own, are happy enough to be
along for the ride.

Unless
resisted successfully, the end result will be EU markets full of foods
that are less healthy without the availability of food supplements to
bridge the gap. The Idiocracy will have arrived – literally –
as the general population is starved of real nutrition for their brains
and bodies. A compliant, non-rebellious citizenry, what more could our
distant Rulers ask for?

Scott
Tips received his Bachelor of Arts degree, magna cum laude, from the University
of California at Los Angeles in 1976, studied at the Sorbonne (Paris I)
from 1976-1977, and obtained his Juris Doctorate degree from the University
of California, Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall) in 1980, where he was
the Managing Editor of the California Law Review. A California-licensed
attorney, he has specialized in food-and-drug law and trademark law, but
also engages in business litigation, general business law, and nonprofit
organizations, with an international clientele.

Since
1989, Mr. Tips has been the General Counsel for the National Health Federation,
the World�s oldest health-freedom organization for consumers, and is now
its president. He also writes a regular column for NewsWithViews.com and
Whole Foods Magazine called Legal Tips, a column he started in 1984. Currently,
Mr. Tips is occupying much of his time with health-freedom issues involving
the Codex Alimentarius Commission and its and other attempts to limit
individual freedom of choice in health matters.

To
understand better the Codex Alimentarius Commission and the global food
standards and guidelines that it is creating, you must read Codex Alimentarius
� Global Food Imperialism. This book is a collection of articles by those
few health-freedom activists with first-hand knowledge of Codex and the
dangers that it poses to our health and health freedom. Compiled by Scott
Tips, this easy-to-read book can be purchased
here.

The
problem with the latest attempt to accumulate even more power in the hands
of the EU Superstate, through the Lisbon Treaty, is that the rulers and
the ruled will become even more distant from one another than they already
are! Centralization of power is the bane of freedom.